Today is launch day for Facebook Business pages.  I held off writing this until I had a chance to play with it.

I converted and published the NewWard page:  take a peek here:  https://www.facebook.com/newward.  The cover photo replaces your “landing tab”. The cover photo gives you the opportunity to brand your page and show off some nice items, but Facebook doesn’t want you to get too spammy about it.  Keep it clean and neat, and not too much text please (You will see a pop up when you change your cover photo giving you the rules).  Cover photos are 830×350.

Custom tabs run across the top, right below the cover photo.  They are not as obvious as they were before, but not hidden either.   If you have too many tabs a “see more” will appear.

What’s interesting is that people can now contact you privately via the FB messaging system.  You can see those when you click on the Admin drop down panel.  The admin panel button is located to the top right of your cover photo.  When you click on it, you can see your insights, notifications and messages.

You can add business milestones and “pin” posts to stay at the top of the page.  People you are personally connected to that commented on the page have their posts higher in the timeline (for the admin) so you can see them and interact easier.  I personally prefer it to be all chronological, but we’ll see how it goes.   Similar to personal timeline profiles, you can chose which interest boxes show up under the cover photo.

I like the “Build an Audience” button.  Speaks more to what a business owner is trying to accomplish by using Facebook.  In case you lost the “Use Facebook as…” Button, that is under the Manage button in the admin panel.

Have you flipped to the new Business Timeline?  Share you link below and show off your work!